In today’s news headlines Primary elections took place in Ohio, Missouri, Michigan, Kansas, and Washington on Tuesday night. The most high-profile race was a special election in Ohio to fill the seat of a retiring Republican Congressman. GOP candidate Troy Balderson – who had the full-throated support of President Donald Trump faced off against Democrat Danny O’Connor. In what should have been an easy GOP win, Balderson struggled to beat O’Connor and as of Wednesday morning led O’Connor by only 1,754 votes in a 50.2% to 49.3% count. There are still 8,500 provisional and absentee ballots left to count. The two candidates will face a re-match in November. Balderson’s struggle in a strongly Republican district spells trouble for the GOP nationwide in the midterms.

In Michigan, Abdul El-Sayed, a young Muslim American candidate backed by Senator Bernie Sanders failed to beat Gretchen Whitmer for the Democratic nomination in a Governor’s race. In Missouri, a candidate backed by Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Cori Bush, also lost her primary challenge to incumbent William Lacy Clay. According to the New York Times, “The left still displayed real political force: Mr. El-Sayed and Ms. Bush both won more than 30 percent of the primary vote as underdog candidates.”

In a closely watched local race in Missouri, a prosecutor in Ferguson who gained notoriety for his role in the investigation of Mike Brown’s killing by police officer Darren Wilson, has been ousted. A City Council member and attorney named Wesley Bell beat the 7-term incumbent Bob McCulloch four years after mass protests raged in Ferguson turning it into an epicenter of the Black Lives Matter movement. Bell’s campaign was backed by high-profile activist and journalist Shaun King. He is expected to easily win the prosecutor’s race in November.

Also in Missouri, a major labor victory was had on Tuesday night when voters overwhelmingly beat back a Republican “Right-to-Work” law. A law making compulsory union dues illegal was passed by the Republican-led Missouri legislature last year. Unions managed to put the law to a popular referendum and voters have now repealed it. According to AP, “The Missouri referendum marked the first chance for voters to weigh in on union powers since the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in late June that public sector employees cannot be compelled to pay fees to unions.”

Meanwhile the trial of Trump’s former campaign chair Paul Manafort continues. Defense lawyers had their chance to cross-examine the government’s star witness Rick Gates on Tuesday. Mr. Gates, who was an aide in the Trump campaign and Manafort’s “right hand man,” had taken a plea deal to cooperate with federal prosecutors and admitted on the stand to embezzling money from Manafort as well as helping Manafort to hide vast sums of money from the IRS. Defense lawyer Kevin Downing confronted Gates saying, “After all the lies you’ve told and the fraud you’ve committed, you expect this jury to believe you?”

Meanwhile Trump’s former personal attorney

FEATURING MIGUEL TINKER SALAS – Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro has survived a drone attack said government officials on Sunday. According to Associated Press, “The assailants flew two drones each packed with 1 kilogram (2.2 pounds) of C-4 plastic explosive toward Maduro, his wife and other top leaders as he spoke Saturday evening at an event,” and that, “A little-known group calling itself Soldiers in T-shirts claimed responsibility for the attack, saying it planned to fly two drones loaded with explosives at the president but soldiers shot them down.”

So far six people have been arrested in connection to the attempted assassination. Mr. Maduro also blamed the US for supporting opposition groups against him. On Sunday Trump’s National Security Advisor John Bolton said on Fox News, “If the government of Venezuela has hard information that they want to present to us that would show a potential violation of U.S. criminal law, we’ll take a serious look at it.”

On Monday Venezuelan authorities released a video showing the moment that Maduro was interrupted by the sounds of a loud explosion while speaking at an event.

Miguel Tinker Salas is a Professor of Latin American History and Chicano/a Latino/a Studies at Pomona College in Claremont, California. He has written several books including The Enduring Legacy: Oil, Culture and Citizenship in Venezuela, and Venezuela: What Everyone Needs to Know, and co-edited Venezuela, Hugo Chavez and the Decline of an Exceptional Democracy.

FEATURING MEDEA BENJAMIN – The Trump administration has made it one of its top foreign policy priorities to undo its predecessor’s nuclear deal with Iran. Barack Obama counted as one of his top foreign policy successes, a hard-won agreement with a nation that was once considered part of a US-defined “Axis of Evil.”

Iran is a deeply misunderstood country in the US. Despite the presence of a rich Iranian American community, non-Iranians in the US know little about the struggles between democracy, monarchy, and theocracy inside Iran. More importantly we rarely hear the context of foreign interference in Iran’s affairs whether it be the British thirst for Iranian oil or the US CIA’s coup efforts.

To address that dearth of history, Medea Benjamin has written a new primer on Iran.

Click here to find out more about the book.

Medea Benjamin, Co-founder of human rights group Global Exchange and the peace organization CODEPINK. She is a long-time political activist who has also written a number of books including Saudi Arabia, Kingdom of the Unjust, Drone Warfare: Killing by Remote Control and more. Her new book is called Inside Iran: The Real History and Politics of the Islamic Republic of Iran

**This segment was originally broadcast in June 2018.

In today’s news headlines, the trial of President Trump’s former campaign chair Paul Manafort continues with federal prosecutors on Monday bringing former Trump aide Rick Gates to the stand. Mr. Gates, considered the government’s star witness in the Manafort case, “calmly acknowledged having embezzled hundreds of thousands of dollars from Paul Manafort and said the two had committed crimes together by stashing money in foreign bank accounts and falsifying bank loan documents,” as per AP. Gates was considered Manafort’s “right hand man.” Many of the millions that Manafort and Gates stashed away in foreign bank accounts, out of the reach of the IRS, was from Manafort’s Ukrainian consulting work.

Meanwhile in the wake of President Trump admitting that his son and campaign advisors broke the law when they met with a Russian lawyer at Trump Tower in 2016 to gather dirt on his opponent, the White House has attempted to do some damage control. According to Raw Story, “[o]n Monday, White House correspondents reported that the White House had issued a ‘lid’ on presidential travel and questions from the press.” The President departed for his golf course in Bedminster, New Jersey last week and plans to remain there vacationing until mid-August.

Trump has been repeatedly tweeting support for GOP Congressional Candidate Troy Balderson in a special election, taking place in Ohio on Tuesday. The closely watched race is being considered a bellweather for the November midterms. Balderson faces Democrat Danny O’Connor. On Monday Trump also threw his weight behind Kansas’ controversial State Secretary Kris Kobach in his bid for governor. Trump tweeted that Kobach, “has my full & total Endorsement! Strong on Crime, Border & Military,” in part because he was, “a strong and early supporter of mine.”

The Mendocino Complex Fire in Northern California has now become the biggest blaze in the state’s recorded history. It is only one of about 18 fires being battled by more than 14,000 firefighters across the state. Climate change has spurred hotter, drier summer weather that has created conditions perfect for such fires to grow in – an outcome predicted by climate scientists for years. President Trump’s weekend claim that California’s environmental laws are to blame for the fires because of water being diverted to the ocean was widely ridiculed on Monday. State officials said they have plenty of water to battle fires.

Meanwhile a new study released Monday underscores the dangers of our new climate era. A paper published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences warned that we may be pushing the Earth into a so-called “hot-house” state – a tipping point from which it would be hard to emerge. The scientists who hail from Denmark, Germany, and Australia, warn in their paper that, “Hothouse Earth is likely to be uncontrollable and dangerous to many.” They added, “A 2 Celsius warming could activate important tipping elements, raising the temperature further to activate other tipping elements in a domino-like cascade that could take the Earth System to even higher temperatures.” This cascade “may tip the entire Earth system into...

FEATURING MANUEL OLIVER – Groups involved in the March for Our Lives mobilized for actions against the National Rifle Association. The main March on the NRA took place outside NRA headquarters in Fairfax, Virginia.

There were smaller marches in cities around the country as well calling for gun control. Many activists marked what would have been the 18th birthday of a young man named Joaquin Oliver killed at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida. His parents Manuel and Patricia Oliver said, “We don’t want thoughts. We don’t want prayers. We want change.”

For more information visit www.changetheref.org.

Manuel Oliver, father, activist, artist and founder of Change the Ref, a group whose mission is, “To raise awareness about mass shootings through strategic interventions that will reduce the influence of the NRA on the Federal level.”

FEATURING ARUN GUPTA – A rally by armed white supremacist Trump supporters in Portland, Oregon on Saturday was the site of violence after police lobbed flash bang grenades at the counter-protesters that had gathered there. About 400 or so members of the hate groups Patriot Prayer and Proud Boys gathered in Portland and were outnumbered by about 1,000 counter protesters.

Police, who have come under strong criticism for their one-sided actions in favor of the white supremacists, arrested four people. Several anti-fascist activists were injured including our guest Arun Gupta’s partner, Michelle Fawcett.

The rally was held just days before the first anniversary of the white supremacist takeover of Charlottesville, Virginia where Heather Heyer was killed by one of the right wing protesters.

Read the Guardian newspaper’s report on Michelle Fawcett’s injuries by police in Portland, HERE.

Arun Gupta is a regular news correspondent for Rising Up With Sonali. He’s an investigative journalist who has written for dozens of publications including the Washington Post, the Guardian, The Nation, Salon, and Raw Story. He is also author of the forthcoming book, “Bacon as a Weapon of Mass Destruction.”

In today’s news headlines President Donald Trump on Sunday dropped yet another bombshell on Twitter, this time incriminating his own son in the matter over the infamous Trump Tower meeting in 2016. In his tweet Trump wrote, “This was a meeting to get information on an opponent, totally legal and done all the time in politics – and it went nowhere. I did not know about it!” In admitting that the goal of the meeting was to get dirt on Hillary Clinton ahead of the election Mr. Trump has implied that his son and/or other campaign staffers and advisers present at the meeting with a Russian lawyer may have broken the law. According to the Federal Election Commission (FEC), there is “a broad prohibition on foreign national activity in connection with elections in the United States.” One reporter writing in Axios called Trump’s tweet, “one of the most striking public reversals in modern presidential history.”

The New York Times reported, “People close to the president believe that he may be increasing his legal jeopardy by continuing to speak publicly about sensitive matters even as his campaign is under investigation for possible collusion with Russia and he himself is under scrutiny for possible obstruction of justice.”

One of Trump’s attorneys also changed his tune in an appearance on ABC on Sunday. Jay Sekulow had asserted last July that the President had no role in a letter that his son wrote to the New York Times about the Trump Tower meeting. Since then it has emerged through Trump’s own people that Trump dictated the letter. Mr. Sekulow on Sunday said he had made a mistake last year when he claimed the President wasn’t involved. 

A rally by armed white supremacist Trump supporters in Portland, Oregon on Saturday was the site of violence after police lobbed flash bang grenades at the counter-protesters that had gathered there. Hundreds of members of the hate groups Proud Boys and Patriot Prayer gathered in Portland and were met with Portland residents including anti-fascist activists. Independent media outlet Unicorn Riot captured the police violence on Saturday. 

Those were some of the sounds of violence from police aimed at anti-fascist protesters at a white supremacist gathering in Portland, Oregon on Saturday. The 400 or so armed Trump supporters were outnumbered by about 1,000 counter protesters. Police, who have come under strong criticism for their one-sided actions in favor of the white supremacists, arrested four people. The rally was held just days before the first anniversary of the white supremacist takeover of Charlottesville, Virginia where Heather Heyer was killed by one of the right wing protesters. On tomorrow’s show, our news correspondent Arun Gupta will give us a detailed report of the Portland rally.

Also on Saturday groups involved in the March for Our Lives mobilized for actions against the National Rifle Association. The main March on the NRA took place outside NRA headquarters in Fairfax, Virginia.

FEATURING JOHN LANGFORD – Donald Trump’s supporters heckled CNN’s White House Correspondent Jim Acosta at a rally in Tampa, Florida last Tuesday chanting “CNN sucks,” as well as, “traitor,” and “You’re a liar.” The rally attendees were channeling their President who has repeatedly pushed violent rhetoric against media outlets like CNN. Trump re-tweeted his son Eric’s post of a video of the heckling.

A CNN reporter on Wednesday asked White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders whether the Trump Administration condoned Acosta’s treatment by Trump supporters. Ms. Sanders said the President does not condone violence against journalists but qualified her statement saying the press needs to act responsibly.

Then on Thursday, at his Pennsylvania rally Trump continued to attack the media. He spoke at length about how the media covered his trip to England where he was late to visit the Queen and called the press “fake fake disgusting news.”

John Langford, Clinical Lecturer in Law, Abrams Clinical Fellow, and Associate Research Scholar at the Media Freedom & Information Access Clinic at Abrams Institute, Yale Law School.

FEATURING PAUL CORT – Nearly 20 states are joining together to sue the federal government over the freezing of fuel efficiency standards to 2020 levels. Donald Trump’s Environmental Protection Agency made the decision to stop requiring automakers to make more fuel-efficient cars under the leadership of acting EPA head Andrew Wheeler. The Trump Administration invoked a series of bizarre justifications that industry experts have ridiculed.

Trump’s EPA also revoked California’s waiver to operate the Zero Emission Vehicle program – which the state has used to clean up its notoriously toxic air through incentives for electric vehicles.

As a global heat wave envelopes the planet – a clear and damning indicator of climate change – it appears entirely counterproductive to the safety of our species for the Trump administration to revoke one of the federal government’s few tools to reduce carbon emissions.

For more information visit https://earthjustice.org.

Paul Cort, Staff Attorney with Earthjustice.

In today’s news headlines, the Trump administration rolled out one top official after another on Thursday to present a strategy for dealing with election security ahead of the midterms. Facing strong criticism from both parties for not doing enough, Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen, National Security Advisor John Bolton, and National Intelligence Director Dan Coats made back-to-back speeches during the White House briefing.

Just hours later the President contradicted them during a campaign rally on Thursday night in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania where he said, “Now we’re being hindered by the Russian hoax. It’s a hoax, OK? I’ll tell you what, Russia’s very unhappy that Trump won, that I can tell you.” In fact Russian President Vladimir Putin had openly said he wanted Trump to win at the recent summit in Helsinki.

During his Pennsylvania rally Trump continued to attack the media just a day after his Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders was denounced for not defending freedom of the press. Trump spoke at length about how the media covered his trip to England where he was late to visit the Queen. On our next show we’ll cover how his remarks have created an atmosphere of violence and danger for members of the press.

Trump also doubled down on the comments he had made during his own Presidential campaign where he had called Mexicans “drug dealers” and “rapists.” On Thursday night he reminded his audience of those comments and then added, “Guess what: What I said is peanuts compared to what turns out to be the truth. It’s peanuts.” One anti-Trump protester was escorted out of the rally as the President’s supporters chanted “USA, USA.”

The President’s daughter Ivanka made a rare public appearance on Thursday at an event organized by the media outlet Axios. She was asked her opinion of the media given her father’s relentless attacks on the press. That was Ivanka Trump saying she did not think the press was the enemy of the people on the same day that her father labeled the media “disgusting.”

She was also asked about immigrant family separation and claimed that it was a low point for her even as she justified her father’s position. That’s Ivanka Trump on Thursday at an event organized by Axios explaining that she was against immigrant family separation, and still implicitly defending her father’s policies.

Vox is reporting that 500 immigrant fathers at a detention center in Texas are going on a hunger strike after being reunited with their children to protest their continued detention. The Texas-based advocacy group RAICES publicized the strike. According to Vox, “The fathers involved in the strike planned to sit down in three public ‘patio’ areas within the Karnes Residential Facility, one of the family detention centers in Texas in which reunited families are being held, and refuse food. Their children have also agreed to a modified strike in which they refuse to participate in activities.”

In other immigration news, representatives of the Trump Administration t...